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Part of a series on Entrepreneurial Women and Men Rocking the World

Kanya Balakrishna

As a career coach, I spend every day helping people pursue their highest dreams for their life and work, and make those dreams a reality. Yet there are thousands of detractors in our country who claim that dreaming is for fools.

So when I heard of The Future Project, whose goal is to “inspire a nation of dreamers,” I had to learn more. I recently had the opportunity to speak with the inspiring Kanya Balakrishna, co-founder of The Future Project, to understand more about its mission and goals.

Launched in October 2011, The Future Project was co-founded by Yale University graduates Andrew Mangino and Kanya Balakrishna. They met through their work on the renowned Yale Daily News as Editor-in-Chief and Managing Editor, respectively. Both became speechwriters in Washington, D.C.

Kanya shared, “Many young people move to D.C. with dreams of doing something that really matters. But what we found was that our generation was looking for something more -- something bigger than ourselves, something new and fresh and creative. We found that our generation was waiting to be called to action.

When we started talking to friends and colleagues about what needed to change most of all in our culture and our world, the answers kept coming around to our educational system. We realized that while everyone’s talking about an “achievement gap” in our schools, the bigger issue is that so many students completely disengage in school. Kids told us that they were bored, uninspired, and didn't see how what they were learning in the classroom was connected to their lives and dreams outside of school.

We started to imagine how the world could be if every young person learned to dream big, connect deeply to what they're uniquely passionate about, and put their dreams in action -- all before they graduated from high school. We imagined a system that teaches people to take risks and bold action, use their imagination, passion, grit and leadership capability to thrive and be inspired to unleash their full potential."

From these discussions, a core idea emerged: What if school became a place where every student, no matter what their situation at home or their background, discovered what they were truly passionate about, and learned how to use their passion to change the world in some way, no matter how big or small?

They shared this idea with everyone they could think of. In October 2010, Andrew and Kanya held a summit gathering in New York City with the intention of bringing interested parties together to explore what the world needs most. Seventy people showed up, and within a matter of weeks they had 60-person volunteer team deeply excited about this new direction and mission.

While this first team was a bit “ragtag”-- it included educators, yes, but also journalists, designers, bankers, scientists -- it was enough to get The Future Project off the ground. They wanted to build this as a national movement, so they decided to launch in four schools across three cities – New York, New Haven, Washington, D.C. – using each city and school as a unique “laboratory” to research their progress.

The model is simple: The Future Project dispatches full-time Dream Directors -- highly trained, world-class leaders and entrepreneurs -- into high schools and charges them with mobilizing a coalition of students and staff who channel their passions to build student-led Future Projects (campaigns, organizations, products) that impact their schools and communities. They also mobilize thousands of volunteers to join the corps and bring the energy and talent of the surrounding community into the school and directly to the students.

The results have been inspiring and wide-ranging: online school newspapers, a school-wide photography competition, a suicide prevention campaign, a "Wake Up for Human Rights" conference, a cancer research fundraising campaign -- and projects that mobilize hundreds, like the "Perfect Revolution," a rally in New York City to redefine the word "perfect" and raise self-esteem among young people.

Here's more about what The Future Project has made possible:

The Future Project has been highly successful by numerous key social innovation standards, with great high level support and powerful outcomes. Initially, 500 young people were involved in the first launch. As of this year, eight schools are participating, with 1000 young people directly involved, and over 5000 students brought into the student-led projects across all the schools.

They’ve raised $1.5 million dollars in the past year, with next year’s goal at $3 million. The Future Project is funded primarily by private individual philanthropic donations, small to medium foundations, and it just won the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation grant, honoring approximately the top 1% of emerging social enterprises each year. There is institutional support as well, from , Yale University and a number of key banks. Now with a team of 22 full-time people including eight powerhouse Dream Directors, The Future Project is poised to grow and reach many more schools and students.

Kanya shares, “Amazing things happen when students put their dreams into action. The Dream Director in the school helps facilitate a whole-school transformation – he or she is the entrepreneurial visionary, and provides powerful leadership that shows the students how to catalyze dreams and turn them into powerful action.”

The ultimate goal is to make The Future Project a self-sustaining business model so that they don’t need to raise hundreds of millions to continue the movement. The Future Project’s goal of “Building a Nation of Dreamers” will of course take time, money, commitment, passion, and vision, but Kanya and Andrew believe wholeheartedly that The Future Project’s staff and volunteer team, Dream Directors and outside supporters have the necessary spirit, innovation, vision and energy to build a self-sustaining model that will ensure continued growth and expansion.

Others think so as well. In New Haven, Mayor John DeStefano has pledged to help raise $500,000 by 2014 from within New Haven to bring a Dream Director to every school there. Tim Shriver, president and CEO of the Special Olympics and a member of The Future Project board, has called The Future Project a great example of grassroots school reform, where change comes from the bottom up, based on what kids want, not what adults deem best for them. He said the program embodies the old adage that good educators must “light a fire,” instead of “fill a pail.”

“The key goal is to infuse education with inspiration,” Kanya shares, “to help each and every student access their own hearts, minds and spirits and do something related to that. We’re looking to create an educational system in which every student can go confidently in the direction of their dreams, and put their dreams in action. The amazing thing is that the kids don’t realize how much they’re learning. They’re doing a ton of work, research, exploration and engaging and leading others in their visions, but they’re so excited about it, it doesn’t feel like work. School has become a place of possibility. In the end, we’re hoping to reinvent the concept of the “dreamer” away from a negative connotation of “soft’ or “frivolous” to a powerful catalyst who takes his or her specific dream and makes it real to positively impact the world.”

* * * * *

I believe that Andrew, Kanya and The Future Project team have done something deeply inspiring for all of us: They’ve identified a serious problem that needs urgent addressing, developed a model for change, inspired the necessary support to launch and test it, and built an effective vehicle for catalyzing needed reform. We all can learn from Andrew and Kanya about going confidently in the direction of our dreams.

What do you dream of doing and being, and can you walk confidently toward it starting today?

For more information about The Future Project and for examples of the students’ projects, visit www.thefutureproject.org and click on the video in this post.